Bob Hanninen

Photographs by Glen Glendenning courtesy Dave Rex
Text by Pete Vack

We begin our review of the SCCA races at Iowa City on May 30th 1955 with Janet Guthrie. While doing our homework on this small Midwest town, we learned that it was the birthplace of the first woman to qualify and compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500, both in 1977. Born in 1938, Guthrie was seventeen at the time of the Iowa City SCCA race and already obtaining her pilot’s license. Seems that her father, also a pilot, was the manager of the Iowa City Municipal Airport, across the river from the old state capitol building, in 1938. Furthermore, Janet first began racing at SCCA events with a Jaguar XK140MC, of which there were plenty at the Iowa City races in the mid-fifties.

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Uncle Gerry got the ball rolling by photographing 2079 in Paris, 1954.

Story by Pete Vack

We’ll call them Fantuzzis, for more than anyone else Medardo Fantuzzi inspired the coachwork of the A6GCS. Perhaps Ermanno Cozza, who was actually an employee at Maserati at the time, gives us the most accurate summation of who was responsible for the design. In his autobiography, Maserati at Heart, (Nada 2018) Cozza describes the phases of construction which involved drivers, mechanics, and designers. He wrote, “The most striking example was without doubt was the launch of the A6GCS/53, which debuted in that year’s Mille Miglia, winning its class with Emilio Giletti. The engine was a version of the A6GCM unit revised by Gioachino Columbo, while the bodywork built by Fantuzzi, was also fruit of an idea by Colombo.” (p43). (Not all of the A6GCS cars were constructed by Fantuzzi’s shop: Thirty three of the bodies were constructed at nearby Fiandri and Malagoli.)

The new Maserati was beautiful, purposeful, as curvy as Gina Lollabrigida and influenced several of our family members. We came up with five Fantuzzi A6GCS Maseratis connected to the Editor’s family. Rest assured that no one actually owned any examples of the real thing. But here’s our story anyway. [Read more…] about One Family, Five Fantuzzis